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Aesthetic manor, absurdist battlefield. "But this cannot be a Gothic tale, because it was the Second World War." Medieval halls in the Ardennes, ragtag Yanks out of the Battle of the Bulge, metaphysical realms and personages for days. The commander (Burt Lancaster) wears an eye-patch over a granite visage, his mission is bedding down the young wife (Astrid Heeren) of the impotent Count (Jean-Pierre Aumont). "Put on a play" is the advice to bored dogfaces, each in his own abstruse fantasia. A cellar filled with Corots and Fragonards for the art historian (Patrick O'Neal), ribald canvases that come to life in the mind of the callow lieutenant (Tony Bill), the novel that is the film imagined by the Black private (Al Freeman Jr.). "My purpose is madness." Sydney Pollack exuberantly experimenting with surrealistic vaudeville and unbalanced frames and Euro-arthouse techniques, a polisher turned hallucinator. The art of war, or is it the art of sex? "Now, if I may make a small analogy..." "You do that, sir." Psychedelic scarlet at the local bordello, the sergeant (Peter Falk) prefers la femme du boulanger. Brahms' "Lullaby" on a flute, the German in the bushes volunteers a revision and gets shot for his trouble, "that's what we do for a living." The fulminating religionist (Bruce Dern) leads a sect of conscientious objectors down snowy streets, an overhead view spots a Giotto O from the Volkswagen the corporal (Scott Wilson) has fallen in love with. The Sixties men-on-a-mission subgenre deranged, a certain Marienbad déjà vu, the rose garden on fire. "Then they start a war and you come to another planet to end it." The climactic siege is contemporaneous with The Wild Bunch, the line of thought culminates with Apocalypse Now. Cinematography by Henri Decaë. With James Patterson, Michael Conrad, Caterina Boratto, and Olga Bisera.
--- Fernando F. Croce |